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Richard A. Falkenrath

Former Assistant Professor of Public Policy; Former Principal Investigator, Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness; Former Executive Director for Research, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

Experience

Former Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School; Belfer Center Faculty Affiliate; Former Principal Investigator, Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness; and Former Executive Director for Research, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 1996-1998

Current Affiliation: Deputy Commissioner of Counterterrorism, NY City Police Dept., New York, New York

2005

By Philip D. Zelikow, Former Associate Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School; Former Faculty Affiliate, International Security Program, Ernest R. May, Former Faculty Affiliate, International Security Program and Richard A. Falkenrath, Former Assistant Professor of Public Policy; Former Principal Investigator, Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness; Former Executive Director for Research, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

Ernest May and Philip Zelikow dispute several points made by Richard Falkenrath in his review of The 9/11 Commission Report. Falkenrath replies to their criticisms.

By Richard A. Falkenrath, Former Assistant Professor of Public Policy; Former Principal Investigator, Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness; Former Executive Director for Research, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

2001

By Richard A. Falkenrath, Former Assistant Professor of Public Policy; Former Principal Investigator, Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness; Former Executive Director for Research, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

The author discusses the evolution of the United States’ domestic preparedness program since the mid-1990s. The program, designed to prepare the country for a domestic terrorist attack with chemical or biological weapons, suffers from a variety of difficulties.

1998

By Bradley Thayer, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 1995–1997, Richard A. Falkenrath, Former Assistant Professor of Public Policy; Former Principal Investigator, Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness; Former Executive Director for Research, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Robert Newman, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 1995-1996

Nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) weapons delivered covertly by terrorists or hostile governments pose a significant and growing threat to the United States and other countries. Although the threat of NBC attack is widely recognized as a central national security issue, most analysts have assumed that the primary danger is military use by states in war, with traditional military means of delivery. The threat of covert attack has been imprudently neglected.

What if the bomb that exploded in Oklahoma City or New York's World Trade Center had used 100 pounds of highly enriched uranium? The destruction would have been far more vast. This danger is not so remote: the recipe for making such a bomb is simple, and soon the ingredients might be easily attained. Thousands of nuclear weapons and hundreds of tons of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium from the weapons complex of the former Soviet Union, poorly guarded and poorly accounted for, could soon leak on to a vast emerging nuclear black market.

1995

By Richard A. Falkenrath, Former Assistant Professor of Public Policy; Former Principal Investigator, Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness; Former Executive Director for Research, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

The legal foundation of the contemporary European security order is the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE). Negotiated by NATO and the Warsaw Pact states as the Cold War was ending and implemented as the new Europe took shape, the CFE Treaty imposes strict limits on the armed forces of all the major European states.

No Date

By Jane Fountain, Former Associate Professor of Public Policy and Director of the National Center for Digital Government and Richard A. Falkenrath, Former Assistant Professor of Public Policy; Former Principal Investigator, Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness; Former Executive Director for Research, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

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